Prisons in the United States

Prisons and the State Laws

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Prisons

In Legislation

Prisons in the U.S. Code: Title 18, Part I, Chapter 87

The current, permanent, in-force federal laws regulating prisons are compiled in the United States Code under Title 18, Part I, Chapter 87. It constitutes “prima facie” evidence of statutes relating to Crimes and Criminal Law (including prisons) of the United States. The readers can further narrow their legal research on the topic by chapter and subchapter.

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Prisons and Prison Discipline in 1899 (United States)

The following information about Prisons and Prison Discipline is from the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and Europea
n Writers.

PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE. The extirpation of crime is the highest aim possible in a penal code. Since to extirpate crime is practically impossible, all existing penal systems content themselves with an effort to repress crime. Crimes are committed by men: therefore they can be repressed or prevented only by the exercise of some restraining influence or power upon the men who commit them. Men are influenced by motives. Their action is the outgrowth of their personal character and experience, which produce in them a greater or less susceptibility to hope, fear, and the sense of moral obligation, and lead them to say, as the case may be, I ought. I must, or, I will. The efficiency of every actual or proposed system for the repression of crime may, therefore, be measured by the knowledge of human nature and the harmony with its fundamental laws displayed in the elaboration of the code. In every good code there is a distinct purpose, and the means employed are wisely adapted to secure the end sought.

-Crime may be repressed in either of two ways, namely, by physical or by moral agencies.

-The highest form of forcible repression is execution, or the death penalty, called capital punishment, because it stands at the head of the list of possible punishments, so that all other punishments are said to be secondary. Capital punishment has been inflicted in many ways, by different nations, and at different stages of their development, among which may be named decapitation, strangulation, burning, breaking upon the wheel, stoning, crucifixion, burying alive, drowning, poison, starvation, shooting, driving a stake through the body, disemboweling and quartering. Most of these punishments are obsolete. The more usual modes of execution [353] in modern times are by means of the gallows and the guillotine, except for military offenders, who are commonly shot to death. Electricity has been suggested as an instantaneous and painless mode of inflicting the death penalty, and an apparatus for its application devised, but not adopted. It is so obvious that a dead man can never again commit crime, that the killing of the offender appears to be the form in which the first rude conception of justice naturally presents itself to the savage mind. It is the usual form in which punishment is inflicted by a mob. But with the advance of civilization. we may trace the gradual disappearance of the stain of blood from the codes of Christendom. Sentence of death, which was formerly pronounced against a long list of crimes, is now reserved, for the most part, for actual murderers. The law even of homicide has been so modified, by the introduction into it of subtle distinctions, as to relieve from execution the majority of those accused of imbruing their hands in the blood of a fellow-creature, by the substitution of imprisonment for the gallows. It can not be denied that the tendency of modern thought is in the direction of the total abolition of the death penalty. The arguments urged against it are: that it is unnecessary; that it is useless, since men are not in fact deterred from the commission of crimes through fear of death; that it is unjustifiable, since society has no more right to take human life than has an individual; that it is unscientific, because it does not admit of degrees in its application, according to the degree of culpability of the offender; that it is irrevocable, which no human punishment, in view of the possibility of a mistaken verdict, should ever be; that it exerts a demoralizing influence upon the spectators and upon the public at large, by exciting the worst passions of human nature, by awakening popular sympathy for the victim, and by rendering punishment uncertain, in consequence of the reluctance of juries to assume the responsibility for a capital sentence; and finally, that if the soul is immortal. the consequences of capital punishment may be eternal, for it terminates abruptly the supposed or real culprit’s chance of repentance and reformation. The apologists of the death penalty, on the other hand, appeal to the authority of the ancient law recorded in the book of Genesis, in the sacred Scriptures, Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; they insist that retribution is a natural instinct; a philosophic principle, a divine command; they urge that society has the same right to protect itself, which is conceded to individuals, that in face of extreme perils, extreme measures of safety are lawful, and that the fear of death has more power to deter a criminal from yielding to his criminal impulses than any other known motive; they also point out that there is a natural passionate reaction, on the part of communities against flagitious offenders, which, if it does not take the form of duly authorized legal process, will find an outlet in mob law, against which it is the duty of human governments to protect individuals and the public. The universality of capital punishment is in its favor; opposed to it is the fact, that, with the gradual amelioration of the severity of punishments, punishment has become more certain, and crime has diminished in volume and intensity. It is evident that the question can be settled only by experience of the practical results of the gradual disuse of this extreme penalty. Executions, in the United States, are almost wholly private.

-A second form of forcible repression is transportation; or the establishment of penal colonies, remote from the mother country, to which criminals are removed. England, Russia and France have resorted to this mode of punishment; but England has abandoned it, and even in Russia the system appears to be doomed to speedy extinction. The history of English transportation is a veritable romance. Little more than a century after the landing of Columbus, the English government began to ship convicts to the wilds of North America. From the year 1718, all offenders sentenced for a term of not less than three years were liable to be transported to America. Convicts were delivered by the courts to masters of vessels as merchandise, which they were at liberty to dispose of to the planters of Virginia, Maryland, Jamaica and the Barbadoes. Not infrequently those who were rich enough bribed the masters to let them go, at landing, and so set the law at defiance. But with the achievement of American independence, this practice of necessity came to an end. The result was, that by the year 1787 the number of prisoners in the hulks on the river Thames amounted to more than 15,000, for whom the government was discussing the propriety and necessity of building prisons. Profiting by the preoccupation of Europe with the events which preceded the French revolution. England had, however, taken possession of the newly discovered continent of Australia, of which the famous navigator, Captain Cook, had given the most glowing description; and accordingly New South Wales was determined upon as the site of a penal colony. On Jan. 18, 1788, after a voyage lasting eight months, 850 convicts, men and women, landed on the east coast of Australia, where the city of Sydney now stands. Thus was laid the foundation of a new empire, the history of whose early struggles and rapid development constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the world. A few years later, a second colony was established in Van Dieman’s Land, an island south of Australia, now known as Tasmania. It was the policy of the government to encourage free emigration to these colonies by grants of land, which were also made to convicts who had served their time and were called emancipists. Subsequently the governor of the colony was empowered to assign convicts to landholders or other free colonists, something after the manner in which prisoners are leased to private persons in the southern states of the American Union. This practice led to the formation of [354] chain gangs and road parties. The worst convicts were sent to penal settlements, of which there were three; that on Norfolk island, which is of volcanic origin and about 900 mi
les east of Australia, has become famous in the history of prison discipline through the labors of Capt. Maconochie, who, from 1840 to 1844, was governor of the island, where he introduced the mark system, of which he was the inventor. Transportation was opposed by John Howard, at the outset, but in vain. Twenty years after Howard’s death, Romilly and Bentham renewed the attack upon it. But it may be said to have received its death-blow, when Richard Whately, archbishop of Dublin, wrote two letters to Earl Grey, in which he characterized it as a system begun in defiance of all reason, and continued in spite of all experience.

In 1837 a parliamentary commission on transportation was formed, of which Sir William Molesworth was chairman, and Robert Peel and Sir John Russell were members, which reported in favor of its abolition, on the ground of its excessive cost, the injustice to the colonies involved in its maintenance, and its effect in increasing crime. This committee pointed out, that, as a punishment, transportation is unequal, because of the extreme variations in the personal fortunes of the expatriated, and because it is the occasion of the severest pain to the better class of convicts, while habitual and hardened offenders feel it the least. Its deterrent influence was said to be very slight, while upon some minds the prospect of emigration at the expense of the public operates as an inducement to commit crime. Transportation to New South Wales ceased in 1840, and to Van Dieman’s Land in 1848. The colony in West Australia, established in 1829, still remained, but the number of convicts sent to it was small. From the year 1847 the principle of probationary punishment in the mother country, prior to transportation, was incorporated in the English criminal code. In 1853 parliament passed an act authorizing penal servitude at home as a substitute for transportation. By the act of 1857 transportation was formally abolished, but under the name of penal servitude it in fact continued until 1867, when the last cargo of convicts was sent to West Australia. During the latter years of its continuance the character of the system underwent a complete transformation. It became a reward for good conduct on the part of prisoners during their incarceration. Its final abolition was not so much the voluntary act of the English government, as it was a necessity arising from the vigorous protest against it by the inhabitants of South Australia.

More about Prisons in the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States

-The transportation of Russian criminals to Siberia dates from the year 1710, in the reign of Peter the Great.

-France has made two experiments in this direction. The first, in Guiana, is admitted to have been a failure; but it is contended that the penal colony of New Oaledonia is a valuable addition to the resources of the French penal system.

-The question of transportation, as an alternative for imprisonment, has a certain limited interest for Americans, owing to the occasional appearance in the newspapers of articles suggesting the propriety of converting Alaska into a penal colony for the United States. But apart from the objections arising from the location and climate of Alaska, the realization of such a scheme as this would involve a revolution in the entire system of prisons throughout the Union. and the assumption of the task of repressing crime by the national government, instead of leaving it to be dealt with by the several states. De Tocqueville has said, in substance, that a nation which does not know what to do with its criminals at home, ships them beyond seas, which is a polite way of saying that nations, like individuals, are selfish, and seek to make others bear the burdens which properly belong to themselves. The question has three branches, namely, the effect of transportation upon the criminal himself, upon the colony to which he is sent, and upon the home country. It is not easy to defend the system upon either of these grounds. Transportation has in itself no reformatory influence; it relieves the home country from the presence of the criminal, but it does not, like hanging, relieve the world; it simply changes the scene of his exploits; and it affords no guarantee that the exile will not return. The supervision of criminals at a distance is difficult, expensive and unsatisfactory. Their presence in the colony is a constant menace and a social peril. Under the most favorable circumstances, the system needs to be surrounded with proper safeguards. In 1846 the Australians demanded of England that as many honest emigrants should be sent out as convicts, as many women as men, and that the families of convicts should be allowed to accompany them.

-The third and only other possible form of forcible repression is imprisonment, by which culprits are removed from society, though not to another world, nor even to another country. Reduced to its lowest term, the fundamental idea of the prison is that of forcible seclusion from the outside world. Society ejects the prisoner, with no higher motive than that of self-protection. According to this view, the prison is a substitute for execution and for transportation, but nothing more.

-In the history of the development of the prison it is easy to trace a certain logical and necessary sequence, corresponding to the order of thought upon this subject. In ancient history small mention is made of prisons, and what little is said about them leads to the inference that their principal use was as temporary abodes, for safe-keeping, of offenders awaiting execution, although there is abundant evidence that prisoners were often released, probably by an act of executive clemency on the part of the ruler, and sometimes they were for years forgotten, as was the case with Joseph, in Egypt. There can, however, never have been any age in which prisons, in some form, were not a necessity, for one purpose or for another; and while the prison, in its present form, is a modern [355] invention, some of the features of our modern system are clearly foreshadowed in the records of the past. It is related, for instance, that in China the young king, Tai-Kia, deaf to the monitions of his minister, Y-in, instead of following the example of his predecessors, gave himself up to every species of vice. The minister tried to reform him; but the king would not listen. There upon Y-in declared:

The conduct of the king is but a series of vices; his associations accord with his nature. No communication must be allowed him with evil companions. (Solitary confinement.) I will cause to be built a palace in Tong. There, near the ashes of his royal sire, I will give him instructions, to the end that he may no longer pursue a vicious life.

(Reformatory discipline, with education as its chief feature.) Accordingly, the king took up his solitary abode in the palace of Tong, put on mourning (a prison dress?), and at length entered into the true path of virtue. From the statement in the Chinese work, Shu-King, written about 2,600 years before the Christian era, that a considerable inclosure of land was assigned to the inmates of a prison, M. Beltrani-Scalia has argued that the convicts must have been employed in cultivating the soil. The allusions to prisons in the Bible are numerous, but too familiar to require citation here. It is, however, worthy of remark, that there is no provision for imprisonment in the Mosaic law. At one time a single prison sufficed for the use of the Roman people, as appears from the third satire of Juvenal.

Felices proavorum atavos! felicia dieasSæcula! quæ quondam sub regibus atque tribunisViderunt uno contentam carcere Romam.

This was probably the Mamertine prison, erected by Ancius Marcius, to which a second was added by King Tullius, which is supposed to have been built immediately under the Mamertine. The remains of this famous structure are still pointed out to travelers, for many of whom a special interest
attaches to the spot, on account of the tradition that the apostle Paul was confined here. In the subsequent history of Rome, transportation was known, under the name of relegatio ad insulam; and penal labor was required of offenders, who were employed upon public works and in mines and quarries. A description of the latomiœ; of Syracuse may be found in Cicero’s oration against Verres. The great thinker Plato anticipated the best thought of our own times, in his book De Legibus, where he has expressed his opinion in the following words:

Let there be three prisons in the city-one for the safe-keeping of persons awaiting trial and sentence; another for the amendment of disorderly persons and vagrants, those guilty of misdemeanors, to be called a sophronesterion (that is, a house of correction, a place for teaching wisdom and continence), which should be visited, especially at night, by the magistrates called sophronestoi; a third, to be situated in the country, away from the habitations of men, and to be used for the punishment of felons.

But this was an ideal not realized by the ancient world, a legacy to us.

-In order to comprehend fully the evolution of existing prison systems, it is necessary to remember that the progress of civilization has been from a condition of slavery to one of freedom, and that it has been characterized by the gradual substitution of the will of the community for the will of the individual, and by legal forms instead of summary process. Under the patriarchal and tribal systems of social organization, the father of the family, or the chief of the tribe, administered justice, according to his personal conception of it, which was often crude and barbarous enough. He alone was free; all the world beside were slaves. Then followed the invention of caste, the emancipation of one portion of the community, the distinction made between slaves and freemen: under this system justice was administered to the slave by his immediate owner and master. The ergastula of the Romans were the outgrowth of this phase of progress-strong, well guarded buildings, in which criminal and refractory slaves, or slaves disposed to run away, were confined. The feudal system came next, under which the face of Europe was dotted with castles, which served as prisons, as well as fortified places of residence. Our word dungeon is a modification of the French donjon, or castle-tower, in which the feudal lord confined, at his own will, his vassals or his enemies. With the disappearance of the feudal system, this arbitrary power of imprisonment came to an end. The twenty-ninth section of magna charta provides that no free man shall be taken or imprisoned unless by lawful judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.

The liberty of the subject was further guaranteed, in England, by the writ of habeas corpus. Under the modern system of criminal jurisprudence, punishment is inflicted only by order of the courts, after judicial inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the prisoner, and the prison itself has become a mode of punishment, which in ancient times it was not.

-Thus we are led to consider the second step in the evolution of the modern conception of the prison. The power to imprison can not, in any age, have been dissociated from the desire to make a display of the power possessed, in order to intimidate others. The appeal to fear always precedes the appeal to any higher motive. From the earliest times the greatest cruelties were perpetrated upon prisoners. Prisons have always been places of execution. They have often, especially in the middle ages, been places of torture. Not only have they been constructed with reference to their adaptation to create discomfort and terror on the part of prisoners, of which notable examples may be found in the pozzi, or wells, in the ducal palace of Venice, and the oubliettes, or bottled-shaped pits, of which the church name was vade in pace, into which, from deference to the maxim Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine, certain ecclesiastical prisoners were thrust, to die there of starvation; but they have been provided with the [356] most elaborate and varied apparatus for the infliction of physical pain. Beccaria, in Italy, whose book on.

Crimes and their Punishment appeared in 1764, was the first who impressed the world with a doubt as to the right or the utility of torture. The rack and the boot and the thumbscrew have disappeared, together with such cruel corporal punishments as mutilation, hanging by the armpits, branding with a hot iron, etc., but the difference between these and the scourge or shower-bath is only in degree, not in kind, while science has invented a new torture, in the application of electricity to a refractory prisoner. The experience of the world has demonstrated the truth of the principle that punishment in itself exercises no reformatory influence; on the contrary, it hardens the man upon whom it is visited, and excites his companions in crime to reprisals. In the war between society and the criminal class there must be a disarmament upon both sides before peace can be declared.

More information about Prisons and Prison Discipline

-But without corporal chastisement the greatest suffering may exist in prisons, through the ignorance, neglect, brutality and cupidity of those to whom the custody of prisoners is intrusted. Promiscuous association of prisoners-the innocent with the guilty, the novice in crime with the hardened villain, the young with the old-and even, in some cases, of the two sexes; defective sanitary arrangements; the absence of all attempt at cleanliness or decency; the lack of discipline, or the failure to exercise any restraint upon the conduct of prisoners to each other, varied by occasional sudden and violent acts of interference; and the practice of extortion by granting special privileges to prisoners who pay for them; these were the evils which, little more than a century ago, aroused the world to a sense of the necessity for a reformation of prisons.

-In order that the reader may have a more distinct understanding of the order of events, in the history of the prison reform movement, a chronological table of principal events is here inserted, which is not, however, designed to interrupt the course of the narrative. The list does not pretend to be complete; it is only intended to serve as an illustration.

TABLE.

1618. Geoffrey Munshull. of Gray’s Inn, Gent., an insolvent debtor, published his book, Essayes and Character of a Prison and Prisoners.

1619. James I. shipped 100 prisoners to Virginia, the beginning of English transportation.

1622. Vincent de Paul appointed chaplain to the galleys, at Marseilles.

1624. John Grevius, a minister, who had himself been a prisoner for a year and a half, on account of his religious belief, published a book against torture.

1698. Jacob Doepler’s Theatrum Pœnarum.

1699. Organization of the Christian Knowledge Society. Dr.-Bray, chairman of committee of prisons, reported, and afterward published, an Essay toward the Reformation of Newgate and the other Prisons in and about London, in which he proposed that every prisoner should be kept in a separate cell.

1704. Pope Clement XI. built the juvenile prison of Saint Michael, with the inscription: Parum est improbos coërcers pœnâ, nisi bonos efficias disciplinâ.

1710. Peter the Great established transportation to Siberia.

1724.

Reflections on the Prisons of the Religious Orders, by Mabillon, appeared in France.

1728. General Oglethorpe (afterward the founder of the state of Georgia) acted as chairman of a committee of the house of commons, to inquire into the state of English jails.

1735. A second parliamentary committee, of which William Hay was chairman.

1748. Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws published. France abolished the galleys, and substituted for them the bagnes.

1764. Beccaria on Crimes and their Pun
ishment.

1765. Blackstone’s Commentaries.

1771. Vilain XIV., of Belgium, published his First Memoir, proposing to convert the citadel of Ghent into a workhouse.

1772. Charles Lorraine ordered the construction of the original prison of Ghent, octagonal and star-shaped. Organization of the Society for the Relief of Poor Debtors. Denne’s published Letter to Sir Robert, advocating separate imprisonment.

1773. John Howard, sheriff of Bedford.

1774. Jail fees abolished in England.

1776. Organization of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.

1778. Howard printed the first edition of his State of Prisons.

An act for the establishment of a penitentiary in England was passed by parliament; this act was the joint production of Howard, Blackstone and Eden, but remained inoperative in consequence of the determination of the government to transport convicts to Australia.

1780. The preparatory question (torture for the purpose of securing a confession of guilt) abolished in France.

1783. Parliament, at the instance of Sir George Paul, passed an act for a new jail and penitentiary in Gloucester.

1786. Capital and corporal punishment abolished in the state of Pennsylvania, and the solitary system of imprisonment adopted as a substitute. Construction of the Walnut street prison.

1787. England sent out the first cargo of convicts to Australia.

1788. Organization of the Philanthropic Society of London.

1789. France abolished torture.

1790. Death of John Howard in the Crimes.

1791. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon.

The French National Convention adopted a penal code: simple imprisonment recognized as punishment for the first time in France.

1792. The Gloucester jail, in England, completed, on the solitary plan.

1801. Torture abolished in Russia.

1813. Elizabeth Fry’s visit to Newgate.

1814. Louis XVIII., of France, ordered the construction of a model prison.

1815. Organization of the London Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline.

1816. Mrs. Fry opened a school in Newgate. Creation of the Auburn penitentiary, in the state of New York.

1818. Organization of the New York Society for the Prevention of Panperism. Buxton’s Inquiry1819. Milbank penitentiary, in London, begun. Organization of the Royal Prison Society of France. Organization of the Prison Aid Society of St. Petersburg. John Falk, of Weimar, organized the Friends in Need.

1821. Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, began the preparation of his System of Penal Law.

1822. Act. 4 George IV., c. 64-the English jail act.

1824. Organization of the Boston Prison Discipline Society.

1825. Opening of the New York House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents.

1828. M. Charles Lucas published The Penitentiary System of Europe and America.

1829. Opening of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia.

1831. De Tocquneville and Beaumont’s tour of inspection of the penitentiaries of the United States.

1833. Dr. Wichern established the Rauhe Haus, at Hamburg.

1835. Colonel Montesinos appointed governor of the prison at Valencia, in Spain.

1836. Crawford’s report to the English government, on American prisons.

1837. Visit of De Metz to the United States.

1838. Juvenile prison at Parkhurst, in the Isle of Wight.

1839. Opening of the Agricultural Colony of Mettray, near Tours, based on religion, the family principle, and military discipline. Matthew Davenport Hill made Recorder of Birmingham.

1840. Alexander Maconochie appointed governor of Norfolk Island. Prince Oscar, of Sweden, published a book on Punishments and Prisons.

1842. Pentonville prison, in London, opened, on the Philadelphia plan.

1844. Organization of the New York Prison Association.

1845. International Prison Congress, at Frankfort-on-the-Main.

1846. International Prison Congress. at Brussels.

1850. Formation of the board of directors of convict prisons in England.

1852. Creation of French penal colony at Cayenne, in Guiana.

1853. English penal servitude act.

1854. Formation of the board of directors of convict prisons in Ireland, of which Capt. Walter Crofton was made chairman.

1857. Transportation abolished by the English parliament. International Prison Congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Organization of the British Association for the Promotion of Social Science.

1870. National Prison Congress at Cincinnati: organization of the National (U. S.) Prison Association.

1872. International Prison Congress of London.

1877. Organization of the Société Générale des Prisons at Paris.

1878. International Prison Congress of Stockholm.

[357] -The above skeleton will serve its purpose, if it illustrates the thought that there is a natural order of progress in prison reform; that prisons are first places of detention, then of punishment, and, last of all, of reformation; reformation being their highest, as custody is their lowest, aim. There have been isolated spirits who have perceived this truth in advance; but it was many centuries before it took possession of the public: yet its acceptance has in the end been rapid and all but universal, for which, possibly, thanks may be due to steam and to electricity, the magicians of the nineteenth century. A review of the history of the movement will show that the first reformers have been those who have had opportunities to observe prison life from the inside; that sympathy has first been awakened for the innocent victims of the prison system, namely, for poor debtors; that the cruelties formerly practiced in prisons excited a reaction in noble minds, which, acting like leaven, communicated itself in the end to the public; and that science and religion have both contributed to the development of a more rational and humane prison discipline. It will also show that the first step in prison reform, everywhere, is classification of prisoners, which may or may not go to the extent of individual separation, but which leads to a classification of prisons; that for the realization of this end, a central administration is essential. By classification, the action and reaction of prisoners upon each other is checked, if not wholly prevented. The second step is kindness and conciliation, which prepare the prisoner for the reception of instruction, and incline him to yield to the influence brought to bear upon him for his conversion from an enemy into a friend of social order. The third is education, which includes not only religious instruction, but mental development, indoctrination in the laws of social life, and the acquisition of a trade or some other means of earning an honest livelihood. The last of these ends can only be secured by the introduction into prisons of organized and profitable labor, which has the further recommendation, that, by employing the prisoner’s time and thoughts, it makes discipline more easy, while it also tends to reduce the cost of punishment. A system of reformatory influence, such as is here indicated, implies trained officials, by whom alone it can successfully be administered, and that again implies reasonable stability and permanence in office, which further implies non-interference for political reasons. Success in the effort at reformation implies the release of the prisoner, absolutely or conditionally, when reformed. Failure in this effort implies the necessity for punishment of the refractory prisoner, either by the infliction of suffering, by the deprivation of privileges, or by the increased duration of his term of imprisonment. Thus it may be seen that the modern prison system, at every stage of its evolution, revolves around one central thought-t
he possibility of reformation; that the reformation of the prisoner is its one animating purpose; that the hope of reformation is the motive to which it owes its origin; and posterity will pronounce judgment upon it from this one point of view. All this is clear, from an attentive study of the history, of which the table given above is a

Author of this text: Fred. H. Wines.

Supermax Prisons in relation to Crime and Race

Supermax Prisons is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Over the past 25 years, changes in correctional policies at federal and state levels have resulted in the creation of supermax housing for inmates in more than 44 states. Supermax prisons are defined as prisons, or separate housing units within maximum-security prisons, designed for the secure control of inmates who have engaged in the following activities in prison settings: (a) committed violent or assaultive behavior against other inmates or staff in another institution, (b) have had difficulty following the rules in lower prison security settings, or (c) have been defined as an inmate who requires housing in a more controlled and restrictive prison setting for some other reason associated with being a threat to institutional security. Thus, these facilities are said to have been designed to house inmates described as the “worst of the worst,” hardened criminals, and inmates who are unable to be controlled through other means.

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Notes and References

Entry about Supermax Prisons in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

Prisons

Prisons in the United States

Prisons and the State Laws

Prisons in State Statute Topics

Introduction to Prisons (State statute topic)

Finding the law: Prisons in the U.S. Code

Prisons

In Legislation

Prisons in the U.S. Code: Title 18, Part I, Chapter 87

Resources

Further Reading

Prisons and Prison Discipline in 1899 (United States)

More about Prisons in the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States

More information about Prisons and Prison Discipline

Supermax Prisons in relation to Crime and Race

Resources

Notes and References

See Also

Prisons in the Criminal Justice System

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